This creamy chicken gnocchi soup is made with seared chicken breast, soft potato gnocchi, and fresh spinach in a half-and-half broth, making a delicious Olive Garden copycat recipe. It all cooks in just one pot, giving you all the comfort of a warm bowl of chicken soup without having to go to the restaurant.
CHICKEN GNOCCHI SOUP At A Glance
Prep
20 min
COOK
30 min
Total
50 min
Serves
6
Pan
5-6 quart Dutch oven
Why I Prefer This to “Going Out” or “Ordering In”
We have a lot of good memories tied up in Olive Garden. But in our pursuit of a healthier and more budget-friendly lifestyle, we stopped going out for dinner and ordering takeout almost entirely. Besides, we like eating at home in our cozy clothes and knowing what went into the pot.
If you’re accustomed to mostly eating out, making restaurant food at home may seem a little mystical. Like, can we really do it, or do they have special processes or ingredients that are hard to replicate? But you really can do it. So if this is your first time trying it, I encourage you to make this rich velvety soup. I love making restaurant food at home (like my smash burgers and chicken alfredo) because I used to eat out so much so I got really familiar with it, putting those dishes into my own comfort food bucket. Plus, it is so empowering to know I can do this myself.
When I mentioned to Greg I was making this soup for dinner last night, his first words were “oh, we gotta have the breadsticks.” And yes, you can make those, too.
Let’s dig in!
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Tips and Notes Before You Start
- Store-bought gnocchi is the plan here, not a compromise. The shelf-stable vacuum-sealed packages in the pasta aisle work beautifully and cost a couple of dollars.
- Sear the chicken breast in the pot before anything else. It is the biggest single difference between this and the restaurant version.
- The half-and-half goes in at the very end, over low heat. Once it is in, keep it at a gentle steam.
- Avoiding lactose? Lactose-free half-and-half is a regular grocery store item now and swaps in cup for cup. There is a short section on it below.
What Makes This Better Than Olive Garden’s?
Their version is genuinely good, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Creamy, mild, comforting, exactly what you want on a cold night. What it is missing is anything browned. The chicken arrives already cooked and gets stirred in, the base is built on stock and cream and flour, and nothing in that pot ever hits a hot dry surface.
So we brown the chicken. Salted breasts go into butter and oil in the bottom of the Dutch oven until they are golden on both sides. When you lift them out, the pan is left with a layer of stuck-on browned bits, and that is pure flavor. The onion, celery, and carrot go right in on top of it, and as the vegetables release their moisture they lift all of it back into the soup. That one step is most of the difference, and it costs you eight minutes.
And the gnocchi go in last. Three or four minutes in the broth, and then the pot comes off the heat. A restaurant is holding this soup through a whole dinner service, so their gnocchi have been sitting in hot liquid drinking it up for who knows how long before your bowl gets ladled. Mine have been in the pot for four minutes. That is why they still look like gnocchi when they reach the table instead of melting into the broth.
Everything else stays faithful. Same spinach, same half-and-half, same soft potato dumplings. We are just cooking it like a home cook instead of a production line, and it all happens in one pot.
What You’ll Need to Make This
Chicken breast. This is what Olive Garden uses and it keeps the broth clean and light-tasting, the way this soup should be. Salt it well and pat it dry before it goes in the pan, because a wet surface steams instead of browning.
Potato gnocchi. These are basically potato dumplings, and you want to use the shelf-stable kind from the pasta aisle, which is the firmest of the three kinds you can buy and the easiest to work with here. (By the way, these are pronounced like “NYOK-kee, ” or just “nokey,” if you need to ask someone at the store or just say it out loud.)
Chicken broth. If you have homemade chicken stock, this is the soup to spend it on, because the broth is most of what you taste. Store-bought low-sodium is completely fine, and it lets you control the salt yourself.
Half-and-half. Whole milk alone comes out thin, and heavy cream alone makes it heavy enough that you can only eat half a bowl. Half-and-half sits right in the middle, and it is what the restaurant uses. If you cannot find it, a cup of whole milk plus a cup of heavy cream is the same thing.
Onion, celery, and carrot. The cut matters more here than you would expect. Olive Garden’s carrot is fine shreds that soften away into the broth and mostly read as color, and I wanted carrot you can actually see on the spoon, so I cut mine into matchsticks (aka julienne) about an eighth of an inch thick. Bagged matchstick carrots from the produce section come already cut this way if you would rather skip the knife work. Be careful not to go much thicker than that… nothing in this soup simmers long enough to soften a chunky carrot.
Butter and flour. These make the roux that gives this soup its body. Do not skip the minute of cooking after the flour goes in… that is what cooks out the raw flour taste.
Fresh thyme. If you can swing this, it tastes amazing … just strip the leaves off the stem before measuring. But if you don’t have that, use dried. Fresh thyme in a cream soup tastes green and a little woodsy, where dried tastes flatter and dustier.
Fresh spinach. We roughly chop this so nobody gets a whole leaf draped over their spoon. It goes in at the very end and wilts in about two minutes.
Which Gnocchi Holds Up Best in Soup?
Shelf-stable is the sturdy one, and sturdy is what holds its shape in hot broth. Refrigerated gnocchi are softer and more potato-forward, which is lovely under a butter sauce, but pretty fragile in a pot. They still work, they just want a minute less in the soup and a gentle hand when you stir.
Frozen is the kind I would steer you away from here, and it is worth knowing why. They shed their ice into the pot as they thaw, which waters down the broth at exactly the moment you want it thick and creamy. If frozen is what is in your freezer, cook them separately per the package and spoon them into the bowls instead.
| Instead of | Use | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | 2 cups shredded rotisserie or leftover cooked chicken | Turns this into a 30-minute soup, though you give up the browned bits. Brown the vegetables a little longer to make some of it up |
| Chicken breast | 1 1/2 lb boneless, skinless thighs | Richer and more forgiving, and they sear beautifully. Give them an extra minute or two per side |
| Fresh spinach | 1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry | Softer, slightly darker. Stir it in with the half-and-half |
| Potato gnocchi | Cauliflower or gluten-free gnocchi | Lighter and quicker to soften, so add them at the very end |
| Fresh thyme | 1 teaspoon dried thyme | Add it with the broth so it has time to soften |
Can I Make This Lactose Free?
You can, and more easily than I knew until recently. Lactose-free half-and-half is a regular grocery store item these days. (SO HAPPY about this!) Lactaid makes one, so do Land O’Lakes and Organic Valley, and they sit right there in the dairy case with the regular cartons. It goes in cup for cup with nothing else about the recipe changing.
Butter is the only other dairy in here, and there is so little lactose left in butter to begin with that plenty of people who skip milk handle it fine. You know your own situation better than I do… if you would rather not chance it, lactose-free butter and plant-based sticks both work with no other changes. One last thing worth a glance: most potato gnocchi are dairy free, though a few brands do work cheese into the dough, so check the package.
How to Make Chicken Gnocchi Soup
We’ll make this in two stages, both in the same pot: searing the chicken, then building the creamy base right on top of what the chicken left behind. Nothing else gets dirty. I’ll walk you through it.
Stage One: Sear the Chicken
Pat the breasts dry and season both sides with salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil and a tablespoon of butter in the Dutch oven over medium-high heat until the butter stops foaming, then lay the chicken in and leave it alone for 4 to 5 minutes. Flip once, cook another 4 to 5 minutes, and pull it out to a plate when it reads 165°F in the thickest part.
Kitchen Tip
One common mistake is nudging the chicken around in the first couple of minutes to see how it is doing. It sticks at first, then it releases on its own once a crust forms, so moving it early just tears the crust off and leaves it in the pan. Don’t worry if the bottom of the pot looks alarmingly dark and stuck. That is exactly what we want, and it comes up in the next step.
Stage Two: The Vegetables and the Roux
Turn the heat down to medium and add the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter, the onion, celery, and carrots. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot as you go. The vegetables let off enough moisture to loosen every one of those browned bits, and the whole base of the soup turns a warm golden brown. Add the garlic in the last minute so it gets fragrant without scorching.
Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir constantly for a full minute. It will look thick and pasty and a little wrong. Then pour in the broth slowly, a cup at a time, whisking as you go. Adding it all at once is how you end up with lumps you have to chase (ask me how I know). Stir in the thyme, salt, and pepper, bring it up to a gentle simmer, and let it cook for 5 minutes to thicken slightly.
Stage Three: Bring It All Together
Cut the rested chicken into bite-size cubes and stir it into the pot along with the gnocchi, straight from the package. Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes, until the gnocchi are tender and the broth has thickened a little more from their starch. One thing to watch is the clock here… they hold their shape beautifully at four minutes, and every extra minute past that costs you a little of it.
Now turn the heat down to low. Pour in the half-and-half, add the chopped spinach, and stir gently for 2 to 3 minutes until the spinach wilts and the soup is hot through. Be careful not to let it boil once the dairy is in, because a hard bubble is what makes half-and-half separate into grainy little curds. Steaming is the goal, not simmering.
Taste it and adjust the salt. See how yummy it looks!
Storing, Reheating, and Making It Ahead
Leftovers
Cooled and covered, this keeps 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator. It thickens up considerably overnight, because both the roux and the gnocchi keep absorbing liquid, so stir in a splash of broth or milk when you reheat and it loosens right back up. Warm it gently over medium-low on the stove rather than blasting it, and stop as soon as it steams.
Making It Ahead
Make the soup through the end of Stage Two, cool it, and refrigerate it up to 3 days. On the night you want it, reheat the base, add the gnocchi fresh, and finish with the chicken, cream, and spinach. Gnocchi that sit in broth overnight are the only part of this soup that really suffers, and this sidesteps it completely.
Freezing
I would not freeze the finished soup. Cream sauces break when they thaw and potato gnocchi turn mealy, so you would be reheating a grainy pot of mush. What does freeze beautifully is the base from Stage Two, before any dairy or gnocchi go in. Freeze it up to 3 months, thaw it in the refrigerator, and finish it fresh.
What to Serve With It
Bread, and honestly not much else. This is a full bowl of dinner on its own. We put breadsticks out with ours, because at this point it would feel wrong not to. When I have the oven going anyway, sourdough focaccia torn into strips does the same job and tastes wonderful also.
Chicken Gnocchi Soup Recipe
Equipment
- 1 large Dutch oven 5-6 quart
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lb chicken breasts boneless, skinless
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1 medium yellow onion , diced
- 2 ribs celery , diced
- 1 cup carrots , matchstick cut (1/8-inch julienne)
- 4 cloves garlic , minced
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 4 cups chicken broth , low-sodium
- 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt , plus more to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 16 oz potato gnocchi (the shelf-stable kind, not the frozen kind)
- 2 cups half-and-half
- 5 oz baby spinach , roughly chopped
Instructions
- Pat the chicken breasts dry and season both sides with the salt and pepper.
- Heat the olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a 5- to 6-quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Sear the chicken 4 to 5 minutes per side, without moving it, until golden and cooked to 165°F. Transfer to a plate.
- Reduce the heat to medium. Add the remaining 3 tablespoons butter, the onion, celery, and carrots. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, scraping the browned bits up off the bottom of the pot, until the vegetables soften. Stir in the garlic and cook 1 minute more.
- Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir constantly for 1 minute.
- Pour in the chicken broth about a cup at a time, whisking after each addition until smooth. Stir in the thyme, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and the pepper. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook 5 minutes, until slightly thickened.
- Cut the chicken into bite-size cubes and stir it into the pot with the gnocchi. Simmer 3 to 4 minutes, until the gnocchi are tender.
- Reduce the heat to low. Stir in the half-and-half and the chopped spinach and warm 2 to 3 minutes, until the spinach wilts and the soup is steaming. Do not let it boil.
- Taste and add salt as needed. Serve hot.
Nutrition
Notes
- Do not boil after the dairy goes in. A hard bubble makes half-and-half separate. Keep it at a steam over low heat.
- Shortcut: substitute 2 cups shredded rotisserie chicken and start at step 3. Brown the vegetables a little longer to build back some of the flavor you lose.
- Make ahead: prepare through step 5, refrigerate up to 3 days, then reheat and finish with fresh gnocchi, the chicken, cream, and spinach.
- Leftovers keep 3 to 4 days and thicken overnight. Loosen with a splash of broth or milk when reheating.
- Gluten free: use gluten-free gnocchi and swap the flour for 3 tablespoons cornstarch whisked into 1/4 cup cold broth, stirred in at step 5 instead of making a roux.
- Lactose free: substitute lactose-free half-and-half cup for cup. Butter is naturally very low in lactose, or use a lactose-free or plant-based stick. Check the gnocchi package, since a few brands add cheese to the dough.
Answers to Your Questions
Can I double this for a crowd?
Everything doubles cleanly except the searing, which still has to happen in batches so the chicken browns instead of steaming. You will want an 8-quart pot.
Can I make this in a slow cooker?
You can hold it warm in one, though I would still build it on the stove, because most slow cookers cannot sear the chicken and long heat is hard on both the cream and the gnocchi. If you want a soup that suits the slow cooker better, my chicken and dumplings is the one I would point you to.
If You Liked This Recipe
The two recipes that come out of my kitchen for the same reason are chicken soup from scratch, which is the one I make when someone is under the weather, and easy chicken alfredo, which handles the other half of my Olive Garden cravings. Both start with the same pound and a half of chicken breast sitting in the refrigerator.
Happy cooking!
Love,
Jennifer
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Meet Jennifer
Jennifer cooks and experiments in the kitchen at Maker Farm, where she focuses on simple pantry cooking, homemade staples, and practical recipes that make everyday meals easier. Over the years she has tested many ways to make cooking simpler and more dependable, and shares the methods that work best in her own kitchen, occasionally showing them on her Heart to Home at Maker Farm vlog.